A Late-Days-of-Christmas Song: AVITAMINOSES

POST #114
This blogpost is dedicated to E.D., with best holiday wishes, December 2017.

PARODY-LYRICS
ORIGINAL SONG: "The Twelve Days of Christmas", traditional carol, of English or possibly French origin, published in its current known form by Frederic Austin 1909.
PARODY COMPOSED: Giorgio Coniglio, January, 2016.

KEYWORDS: traditional, holidaysong, medical

This parody-song is just in time for the end of Twelvetide.  Recently there has been some emphasis on the excessive use of multi-vitamin supplementation pills in the general population. But, many of our processed foods are already enriched with these essential chemical nutrients, and freedom from vitamin-deficiency diseases (avitaminoses), such as rickets, beriberi and pellagra is a gift for all mankind.

The pronunciation of the chemical names is a bit difficult, and for some of them, alteration from the typical was necessary to fit the meter of the original; these instances have been flagged by capital letters indicating the vowels which require unusual emphasis; e.g. ribOflavin, pEllagra. 

The bracketed material is included for edification and for comparison with the original lyrics, and is not meant to be sung. In the second verse, (?)indicates cases in which a clinical deficiency state is not certain.  

THE AVITAMINOSES

(to the tune of "The Twelve Days of Christmas"- final verse)

Twelve funky diet factors,

Funk named them vitamine *:

(12.) Ascorbic Acid (vit C)

(11.) Retinol’s good for vision (vit A)

(10.) Cholecalcif’rol (vit D)

(9.) Alpha-tocoph’rol (vit E)

(8.) K – phylloquinone (vit K)

(7.) Hydroxo-cobal’min (vit B12)

(6.) Then, Folic Acid (vit B9)

(5.) Next, bIOtIn  (vit B7)

(4.) PantOthenate (vit B5)

(3.) Niacin (vit B3)

(2.) RibOflavin (vit B2)

(1.) And the first ‘B’ known as ThiamIne (vit B1)

For each vitamin, twelve-odd,

Its lack will cause disease:

C-lack gives scurvy

A-absence gives night blindness

Rickets and fractures (vit D)

‘Oxidative damage’? (Vit E)

K-lack gives bleeding

C. Eijkman 1929
Nobel Prize in Physiology
discovery of anti-neuritic factor (B1):
commemorative stamp 

Anemia pernicious (vit B12)

Fetal malformations (vit B9)

Low fertIl-I-tY? (vit B7)

NeurOpathy? (vit B5)

PEllagra (vit B3)

Amplifies B3 (vit B2)

Brain disorders and beriberI. (vit B1)

(Outro)

A dozen Nobel Prizes

Awards in Chemistry,

And Med’cine and Physiology.

* Casimir Funk, working to elaborate the 'antineuritic' property of rice bran for potential therapeutic use in beriberi, isolated a substance that he called 'vitamine' as it contained an amino- chemical group.  

HOTLINKS TO OTHER MEDICAL-THEMED SONG-POSTINGS

Adenoma

Avitaminoses (see below)

As We Nuke It

Flaking Out is What They Do

Mel and His Hernia

Mergerwocky

Off-Patent Drug#19

Prostate Cancer

Reflux Romp

R-I-C-E

The Uniqueness of Nuclear

The Valgus and the Carbuncle

Under My Own Steam part#1

Under My Own Steam part#2

Where Has Neurosyphylis Gone?

...AND A FEW LIMERICK-BASED SONGS

Singable Limerick-Medley #17: Nuclear Cardiology

Singable Limerick-Medley #20: Medical Imaging

UKULELE-FRIENDLY FORMAT
(Click on any chord-chart slide to move to 'song-presentation mode'; then navigate through thumbnails at bottom of page.)